The Border: The final gripping thriller in the bestselling Cartel trilogy. Don Winslow

Rangers.

      Barrera was ant food and Tompkins needed a new paycheck, so he was perfectly happy to take Eddie’s messages about what to do with the money stored in offshore accounts all over the world.

      Seven million in fines, fuck you, Uncle Sam, Eddie thinks. I’ve had that much fall out of my pockets into the sofa cushions.

      Eddie owns four nightclubs in Acapulco, two other restaurants, a car dealership, and shit he’s forgotten about. Plus the cash getting a tan on various islands. All he has to do is complete his time and get out and he’ll be set for life.

      But right now he’s in Florence and Caro wants to know what’s “new.”

      Eddie thinks, Caro don’t want to know what’s new in Florence, but what’s new out in the world, which Eddie hears about when he’s in the exercise cage or by standing up on his bed and talking through the vent to his neighbors.

      Now Caro asks, “What do you hear from Sinaloa?”

      Eddie doesn’t know why Caro even cares about this shit. That world passed him by a long time ago, so why is he thinking about it? Then again, what else does he have to think about? So it’s good for him to just shoot the shit like he’s still in the game.

      Like those old guys back in El Paso, hanging around the football field, telling war stories about when they played and then arguing about who this new coach should start at quarterback, whether they should dump the I for a spread formation, that sort of thing.

      But Eddie respects Caro and is happy to kill the time with him. “I hear they’re ramping up their chiva production,” Eddie says.

      He knows Caro won’t approve.

      The old gomero was there back in the ’70s when the Americans napalmed and poisoned the poppy fields, scattering the growers to the winds. Caro was present at the famous meeting in Guadalajara when Miguel Ángel Barrera—the famous M-1 himself—told the gomeros to get out of heroin and go into cocaine. He was there when M-1 formed the Federación.

      Eddie and Caro talk bullshit for another minute or so, but it’s cumbersome, communicating through the plumbing. It’s why narcos are scared to death of extradition to an American supermax—on a practical level, there’s no way to run their business from inside, like they can do from a Mexican prison. Here they have limited visitation—if any at all—which is monitored and recorded. So are their phone calls. So even the most powerful kingpin can only receive bits of information and give vague orders. After a short while, it breaks down.

      Caro has been in a long time.

      If this were the NFL draft, Eddie thinks, he’d be Mr. Irrelevant.

      Eddie sits across the table from Minimum Ben.

      He admires the lawyer’s style—a khaki linen sports jacket, blue shirt and a plaid bow tie, which is a nice touch. Thick snow-white hair, a handlebar mustache and a goatee.

      Tompkins would be Colonel Sanders if it were chicken, not dope.

      “BOP is moving you,” Tompkins says. “It’s standard operating procedure. You have a good record here so you’re due for a ‘step-down.’”

      The American federal prison system has a hierarchy. The most severe is the supermax like Florence. Next comes the penitentiary, still behind walls but on a cell block, not solitary. Then it’s a correctional facility, dormitory buildings behind wire fences, and finally, a minimum-security camp.

      “To a penitentiary,” Tompkins says. “Given your charges, you’re not going lower than that until your release date is close. Then they might even move you to a halfway house. Jesus, Eddie, I thought you’d be happy about this.”

      “Yeah, I am, but …”

      “But what?” Tompkins asks. “You’re in solitary confinement, Eddie, locked down twenty-three hours a day. You don’t see anybody—”

      “Maybe that’s the point. Do I have to explain it to you?” Sure, here he’s in solitary and solitary is a bitch, but he’s handling it, he’s gotten used to it. And he’s safe in his own cell, where no one can get to him. You put him on some cell block somewhere, the snitch cloud might rain all over him. Eddie doesn’t want to say this out loud, because you never know what guard is on whose payroll. “I was promised protection.”

      Tompkins lowers his voice. “And you’ll get it. Do your time and then you go into the program.”

      I have to live through my time to serve it, Eddie thinks. If I get moved, my paperwork goes with me. They can keep my PSI under wraps here, but in a penitentiary? Those guards would sell their mothers for a chocolate glazed. “Where are they sending me?”

      “They’re talking Victorville.”

      Eddie wants to swallow his teeth. “You know who runs Victimville? La Eme. The Mexican Mafia. They might as well transfer me to Culiacán.”

      La Eme does business with all the cartels except the Zetas, he thinks, but they’re thickest with Sinaloa. They get a look at my pre-sentence interview, they’ll shank me in the eyes.

      “We’ll get you housed in a protective unit,” Tompkins says.

      Eddie leans across the table. “Listen to me—if they put me in AdSeg, they might as well announce I’m a rat over the PA. You think they can’t get to me in segregation? You know how hard that is? A guard leaves a door unlocked. I’ll slash my wrists here before I let them put me in protection.”

      “What do you want, Eddie?”

      “Keep me where I am.”

      “No can do,” Tompkins says.

      “What, they need the cell?”

      “Something like that,” Tompkins says. “You know the Bureau of Prisons. Once they start the paperwork …”

      “They don’t care if I die.” It was a stupid thing to say and he knows it. Of course they don’t care if you die. Guys die in prison all the time and most of the admin write it off as a no loss, addition by subtraction. So does the public. You’re already fucking garbage, so if someone takes you out, all the better.

      “I’ll do what I can,” Tompkins says.

      Eddie’s pretty sure that what Tompkins can do is exactly nothing. If his papers follow him to V-Ville, he’s a dead man.

      “You gotta call someone for me,” Eddie says.

      Keller answers his phone and it’s Ben Tompkins.

      “What do you want?” Keller asks, not happy.

      “I represent Eddie Ruiz now.”

      “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

      “Eddie wants to speak with you,” Tompkins says. “He says he has valuable information.”

      “I’m out of the game,” Keller says. “I don’t care about any kind of information.”

      “He doesn’t have valuable information for you,” Tompkins says. “He has valuable information on you.”

      Keller flies to Denver and then drives down to Florence.

      Eddie picks up the phone to talk through the glass. “You gotta help me.”

      He tells Keller about his imminent transfer to Victorville.

      “What’s that have to do with me?” Keller asks.

      “That’s it? YOYO?” You’re on your own.

      “We pretty much all are, aren’t we?” Keller says. “Anyway, I don’t have any swag anymore.”

      “Bullshit.”

      “Truth.”